A Day in the Life: Seeing the Sacred in the Ordinary

“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13)

What do you think when you hear the word “ordinary”? Does ordinary mean plain, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill, boring, same-old-same-old? Well, let me ask… When you read the gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) or the story of the early Church in the book of Acts, what do you think the “ordinary” life of the Christian is like? What is it about these “ordinary men” who were with Jesus—everyday followers—that left rulers, elders, and teachers of the law “astonished”?

Lately, I’m noticing that word “ordinary” a lot, in connection with daily disciplines and spiritual practice. How do we view an ordinary day, and how does Christ call us to make the most of every opportunity? Are we cultivating a way of life—a way of paying attention, being aware, and noticing God’s Holy Spirit presence in the middle of the seemingly mundane?

Recently, I picked up a book called Living Christ: Embodying Jesus’ Life in Worship Through the Christian Year by Wesleyan author Daniel L. Rife. In this book, Rife applies an understanding of the Christian calendar to our everyday, seasonal rhythms of Christian living. Rife connects our sense of time with the life of Christ and the life of His Church, outlining ways Christians have traditionally observed our “ordinary” year together.

This might already sound boring to you. Perhaps you’re generally familiar with some dates of the Christian calendar, as many are—aware of terms like Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter, maybe without always understanding exactly what these seasons or their associated customs represent. Personally, I’ve learned a lot since God called me toward ministry back in 2012, but most recently, Rife’s book has introduced me to a fresh look at the period in our Church year called “Ordinary Time.”

This is the time after Pentecost (a day which commemorates the Holy Spirit’s outpouring of power on the early believers), continuing till the first Sunday of Advent, which we’re approaching in a few weeks. Although it tends to get lumped as “the rest of the year” outside major holidays, Ordinary Time doesn’t equate to boring time. As Rife writes,

“Ordinary Time is anything but ordinary… [Professor] Constance Cherry explains it like this: ‘Ordinary refers to the ongoing work of the church to spread the message of Jesus Christ—his teaching, healing, restoration, reconciliation, forgiveness, etc.—the ordinary work and ministry expected of Christ’s followers.’ Ordinary Time reminds and exhorts us to live out of Christ’s basic, fundamental, ordinary expectations of us.

“Therefore, the season is a season of commitment: commitment to Christ, to neighbor, even to self—to live intentionally for the betterment of the community… Though we are the church throughout the whole year, Ordinary Time explicitly reminds us to be the church in our ordinary everyday lives… Ordinary Time is the longest season of the Christian Year. It is celebrated for close to half the year. In this sense, the Christian Year puts great weight on the role of the church in the story of God. Christ’s life on earth is remembered for half the year, and the life of Christ lived out by the church is commemorated the rest of the year.”

How do we celebrate a season of commitment? There’s something about this time of commemoration, in daily practice with one another, which seems particularly precious in conjunction with the long COVID-19 season we’re experiencing. Even as we’ve undergone stressors of health risks, social distancing, and many economic uncertainties ahead, we’ve also had an unequaled opportunity to remember our connection to our community and to the universal Church—both around the world and throughout Christian history.

Another book that’s come my way this fall is called The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World. There’s that word “ordinary” again... In this book, author Rosaria Butterfield describes the critical, here-and-now urgency of opening our doors to the people around us, engaging in the hard and holy work of welcoming actual humans into our actual lives. She writes,

“Who else but Bible-believing Christians can make redemptive sense of tragedy? Who can see hope in the promises of God when the real, lived circumstances look dire? ... And where else but a Christian home should neighbors go in times of unprecedented crisis? Where else is it safe to be vulnerable, scared, lost, hopeless?”

If we see ourselves as ones positioned by God Himself in a world where so many are experiencing such a time of unprecedented crisis—how, then, shall we live? That’s where the “ordinary” life of the everyday Christian lights up like a radiant beacon for an astonished world to see. Having given His people the power of His Holy Spirit to break out of our captivity to sin, Jesus extends the invitation—no, He has issued the commands—to “Love one another” (John 13:34) and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). Jesus spells out for us in no uncertain terms that freedom from sin means commitment to the wellbeing of others. Butterfield continues,

“[H]e did not leave us there, little isolated agents of grace, running our own ‘random acts of kindness’ campaign. No, he gave us his bride, the church—his church—to which we who believe are called to make a covenant of membership, to become a family, to be both set apart from and missionally placed in the world, to take care in a daily way of our brothers and sisters in Christ... to draw others... into our homes, families, and churches…
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“The Jesus paradox manifests contagious grace as practiced by ordinary people like me and you, desperately needed, especially now… bring[ing] together the mystery of union with Christ and the fellowship of the saints to gather in close the stranger and the outcast and the chronically lonely. We make gospel bridges into our homes because we notice the people around us and their needs. We see people whom God has put into our lives—especially the difficult ones—as image bearers of a Holy God and therefore deserving of our best.”

God has positioned His people in ordinary places as agents of His extraordinary power and grace. Together, we are the body of Christ—His healing, merciful presence among hurting humankind. Wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, each and every one of us is uniquely gifted and equipped to welcome the stranger and love our neighbors as ourselves. These are “good works” prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

Maybe you feel impatient with this, thinking there must be something “more” or “better” for you out there. But in God's economy, it’s the small things, over time, that add up to the big thing in the end: a life conformed to Christ, for His glory, for the sake of others.

That makes the small things into big things. Every single day—with all of its tasks, errands, and interruptions—presents a dazzling array of invitations to live and move and have our being in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him, the simple act of going about our day becomes a training ground for spiritual exercise, seeing the world the way God sees it.

After all, this is the God of all Creation—Maker of heaven and of earth (Genesis 1:1)—the God Who sees every sparrow (Matthew 10:29), Who numbers every hair on your head (Luke 12:7), Who points to the flowers of the field (Matthew 6:28) and the ants going about their labor (Proverbs 6:6) to teach us about our way of life as His people. What is it about these ordinary things that we have so much to learn from?

It’s a question I hope we’ll keep asking ourselves. As our current season of Ordinary Time turns toward the season of Advent to come, in the month ahead, I pray God opens our hearts and our minds to the convergence between the two—the life of the Church welcoming in the life of Christ. I pray we aspire to be ordinary people ever more attuned to the extraordinary work of God, Who keeps us encountering grace, growing in grace, and giving grace all year round. May our whole understanding of what is "ordinary" be radically reoriented the more we seek God’s will for us each day, as committed members of the body of Christ.

(If you’d like to learn about church membership as a next step of commitment, you can sign up for our Nov. 8th Membership Class here or email info@gracepointwesleyan.org for more information.